Posts

The Court Has Ruled. The Law Is Clear. It’s Time to Build.

At some point, the arguments run out and the decision remains. That point has been reached in the dispute over the Imperial Valley Data Center.

The legal argument has been resolved. The Superior Court ruled the City of Imperial’s complaint legally insufficient — affirming that the project’s ministerial approval was correct and that the attempt to force it into a discretionary review process has no legal foundation. The law has been applied. The outcome is clear.

The environmental argument has been resolved by the project’s design. The water consumption concern is addressed by the recycled wastewater system. The grid impact concern is addressed by the dedicated substation and the 862 MWh BESS. The land use concern is addressed by I-2 Heavy Industrial zoning that exists precisely to accommodate facilities of this type.

The economic argument is not a argument — it is arithmetic. 1,688 union jobs. $72.5 million in one-time tax revenue. $28.75 million annually thereafter. These are the largest numbers of their kind in Imperial County’s history, from a single project, on land that has been waiting for this use for decades.

What Remains

What remains is an appeal filed by a city that the trial court already ruled against. An appeal that will cost more public money to pursue, add more time to the project’s delay, and arrive at an outcome that the legal framework makes increasingly difficult for the city to win. The appellate court will review the same legal questions the trial court addressed. The by-right zoning doctrine has not changed. The ministerial approval framework has not changed. The Permit Streamlining Act has not changed.

What also remains is a federal civil rights lawsuit that has placed individual officials on notice that the personal financial cost of continued obstruction is no longer zero. The discovery process that lawsuit will generate may produce the documented evidence of coordination and retaliation that the complaint alleges. The officials named in it are making a calculation about whether continued aggressive obstruction is worth the personal exposure it creates.

And what remains is the community’s voice — the residents of Imperial Valley who have the most to gain from this project and who have been largely absent from the public record of a dispute dominated by organized opposition groups, city officials with competing political interests, and a media environment that has given more coverage to the allegations against the developer than to the legal outcomes that dismissed them.

The Time for Waiting Is Over

The County of Imperial has approved this project. The Superior Court has validated that approval. The developer has committed $10 billion in capital, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit to defend the project’s legal rights, and continued to advance development through years of coordinated obstruction.

The people of Imperial Valley have waited long enough. The jobs that would have been filled during these years of litigation are not retrospectively available. The tax revenue that would have been collected is not coming back. The water recycling project that was blocked, the wastewater treatment upgrades that would have benefited El Centro and Imperial, the Salton Sea contributions that would have flowed from an operating facility — none of this can be recovered for the time that has been lost.

What can be recovered is the future. The project is legal. The economic case is overwhelming. The community deserves to have its institutions honor the approval that was lawfully granted and let this project become what Imperial Valley has been waiting for it to be.

The court has ruled. The law is clear. It is time to build.

What “Legally Insufficient” Really Means: The February 2026 Court Ruling on the IVDC

Courts use precise language for precise reasons. When an Imperial County Superior Court judge described the City of Imperial’s amended complaint against the IVDC as “legally insufficient” on February 10, 2026, that phrase was not editorial commentary. It was a legal conclusion — the product of a judge reviewing the city’s arguments and determining that they do not, as a matter of law, state a valid legal claim.

“Legally insufficient” means the complaint failed to allege facts that, even if true, would entitle the city to the relief it was seeking. It is a higher-bar finding than a procedural dismissal. The judge was not saying the city filed its papers incorrectly. The judge was saying the city’s fundamental legal theory — that the IVDC required a Conditional Use Permit rather than a ministerial permit — is wrong as a matter of law.

What the Ruling Actually Decided

The City of Imperial’s lawsuit rested on a single central argument: that the IVDC could not be approved through a ministerial permit process because it required discretionary review under CEQA. If the project required discretionary review, a Conditional Use Permit would be necessary. A CUP triggers a public hearing process in which opponents can raise objections, demand studies, and ultimately block or condition the project in ways that would have made it economically nonviable.

The court said no. The project site is zoned I-2 Heavy Industrial. Data centers are a permitted use in I-2 zoning by right. A by-right use that conforms to applicable development standards does not require a CUP and does not trigger CEQA. The ministerial approval issued by Imperial County was legally correct.

This is not a technical quibble. It is the central dispute in the entire legal battle. The city argued the approval process was wrong. The court disagreed. The approval stands.

The Significance for By-Right Development

The broader significance of this ruling extends beyond the IVDC. By-right development — the principle that a project conforming to applicable zoning and development standards is entitled to ministerial approval without additional discretionary review — is the legal foundation for regulatory predictability in California’s land use system.

If every by-right project can be challenged by neighboring jurisdictions claiming the project actually requires a CUP, the by-right system becomes meaningless. Any opponent of any project can raise the same argument, force the same litigation, and impose the same delay and cost. The investment certainty that by-right zoning is supposed to provide disappears.

The court’s ruling affirms that I-2 zoning means what it says. A project built in accordance with I-2 standards on I-2 zoned land does not require additional approval from jurisdictions that don’t like the project. That is a significant affirmation of how California’s land use system is supposed to work.

The City’s Response and What It Costs

The City of Imperial has the legal right to appeal the ruling. It is exercising that right. This is standard practice — appellate processes exist for a reason, and losing at the trial court level does not obligate a party to abandon its claims.

But the appeal extends the delay. It costs more public money. And it extends the period during which the IVDC is unable to break ground, the 1,688 union positions are not filled, and the $28.75 million annual tax revenue does not flow to the county’s schools and public services.

The city’s residents are paying for litigation that their city filed, on a project their county approved, in a jurisdiction their city does not control. Every month of appellate proceedings is another month of taxpayer-funded legal fees spent trying to override a ruling that the court already called legally insufficient.

At what point do the residents of the City of Imperial ask their council members to account for those expenditures — and for the larger economic consequences of the campaign those expenditures are funding?